Apple PR pulled out the big guns this week and invited, nay “encouraged” tech and entertainment media luminaries to pack the Yerba Buena Center for Steve Jobs’ “Let’s Rock” in San Francisco on September 9th.
The now-familiar rumors and speculation, with “leaked” photos and drawings that precede these Apple “events” have been flying back and forth for weeks, and soon enough we’ll see how all the pieces fit together. Join us on Tuesday as we twitter the proceedings.
We invite you to follow along with us as the morning unfolds, using the keynote bingo card below to keep track of both likely and rumored items that could appear during the presentation.
Written by Lonnie Lazar on September 6th, 2008 with no comments.
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Amazon.com is now offering what it calls “instant ad-free movies and TV shows” on Macs, PCs and Sony BRAVIA TV sets at the newly re-branded “Amazon Video On Demand” website.
A few months ago, consumers greeted the giant webertainment service’s “Unbox” partnership with TiVo with a collective yawn, due mainly to complaints about the lack of on-demand streaming options, according to the director of Amazon Video On Demand, Roy Price, who says “the ability to watch content instantly without downloading first was among the most requested features of our customers, and now it’s live–customers can instantly watch the ad-free title of their choice …”
Some promotional videos are free and you can preview the first 2 minutes of any offering. Episodes of TV shows cost $1.99 and movies are $14.99. Movies can also be ‘rented’ for 24 hours for $3.99. Purchasing allows download to two machines and unlimited viewing online. The service claims to stock over 14 thousand movies and 1,200 TV shows including pre-purchase-able rights to upcoming seasons.
Amazon claims to be the only digital video service in the US offering the choice of streaming as well as downloading webertainment content.
Written by Lonnie Lazar on September 5th, 2008 with no comments.
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Shouldn’t the Dems be on the Left and the Repubs on the Right?
Just in case you didn’t get enough of the Democratic and Republican conventions from the mainstream media during the past fortnight, Apple has kindly made the speeches from both conventions available for free on iTunes. The collections include audio files for almost every speaker as well as audio and video for the more prominent ones.
Given how often politicians are known to be for something before they are against it, these could come in handy someday.
Written by Lonnie Lazar on September 5th, 2008 with no comments.
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Photographer Pat St. Clair has a couple more panoramic images from Thursday’s big night for the Democratic Party at Invesco field in Denver.
Above is a still shot from his vantage point near the Jumbotron behind the media pavillions. St. Clair made it from three fisheye images stitched and interpreted usung PTGui Pro 7.8 on a McBook Pro. The original size image is here.
Go here for a dynamic four-image shot that captures the enormity of that historic evening.
Unlike St. Clair, I was in Denver without the benefit of a Press Pass or professional photographic equipment and struggled to capture my own memories with the rudimentary camera in my iPhone.
Judge for yourself the quality of the iPhone’s camera by clicking on the gallery thumbnails. Large pics and descriptions after the jump.
 
 
 
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Written by Lonnie Lazar on August 30th, 2008 with no comments.
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Photographer Pat St. Clair shot a super-cool QuickTime panoramic photo from last night’s historic session of the Democratic Party’s convention at the Pepsi Center in Denver, CO.
Working on assignment for LightSpeed Media, St. Clair shot the DNC image using a new Canon XSi with a Sigma 8mm f3.5 circular fisheye lens. It was four shots around on a custom rig, with the camera set to ISO 1600 and aperture priority metering.
He shot RAW files, used Photoshop Camera Raw to render them to tiffs, stitched the panorama in PTGui Pro 7.8. and authored the final pan in Cubic Converter, all on a MacBook Pro.
Written by Lonnie Lazar on August 28th, 2008 with no comments.
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